Saving Chicago's skyline

Spray from a boat's wake can be seen in front of the city skyline Thursday, June 30, 2016 on Lake Michigan near Chicago.

Spray from a boat's wake can be seen in front of the city skyline Thursday, June 30, 2016 on Lake Michigan near Chicago.

(Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

Hal Higdon

Half a century ago, I moved my family from an apartment on the South Side of Chicago around the bottom of the lake to our current home in Long Beach, Ind. A freelance writer, I commuted frequently to the city for interviews with subjects and talks with editors.

I drove the expressway bordering Gary and past the foundries of U.S. Steel. Smoke billowed from smokestacks, blowing across the expressway, soot to settle on clothes hanged outdoors to dry by the citizens of Gary — many of whom worked in the mills. They breathed the smoke-filled air, but hardly could complain. Smokestacks served as a sign of prosperity; still do today.

Prosperity unfortunately threatened the air we breathed and the water we drank.

Along with smoke, the mills, the refineries and other industries discharged pollutants, which eventually found their way downstream to Lake Michigan.

A friend owned a powerboat. We cruised the shoreline, once exploring a branch of the Calumet River in East Chicago, Ind. We did not get far. Heading upstream the water grew darker and darker: brown, oily, rancid. We knew not whether it was industrial waste or human waste, but did that matter?

Then as now, I was a runner. I frequently trained on the beach, running a round-trip route from our home to the Michigan City lighthouse in Michigan City, Ind. During those runs, I rarely remember seeing the Chicago skyline, despite the lake being only 38 miles wide at that point (according to a sign at the end of Navy Pier).

That was half a century ago, a half-century during which regulations have forced polluters to stop, or at least pause; a half-century during which the air and the lake gradually have grown cleaner. Today, when I look across the lake, I often see the Chicago skyline. Not only during the day, but particularly at night when lights from high-rises on the lakefront stretch from one end of the horizon to the other. Yes, Gary still sports smokestacks, but not as many billowing clouds as years before. I have not cruised the Calumet River, but I suspect (or hope), that its water flowing into the lake has gone from brown to blue. That assumes the Environmental Protection Agency has done its job.

And that's the point. Given the direction charted by the new administration, will we even have an EPA two years, or four years, or eight years from today?

Environmentalists, those of us who see as our mission preserving the planet, lately have come onto hard times. Denying "climate change" has become a priority among those who equate regulations with lost jobs. Thus, focusing on climate change may have been a tactical error. Not everybody cares about glaciers melting in the Antarctic. Penguins don't vote in our elections.

But will those living on the far shore still see the Chicago skyline? Will our water be fit to drink? Instead of warning against climate change, maybe we should be preaching the benefits of clean air and clean water.

Given the news out of Washington, industrialists are about to be given a license to pollute. With restrictions removed and a gutted EPA, will the CEOs of major corporations take advantage of this license? How many have the will to resist the temptation to pollute?

When the opposing party returns to power in Washington — as surely it must — hopefully there will remain an environment to protect. The mission to keep our air and our water clean will continue.

I will feel sad if I no longer can view the Chicago skyline.

Hal Higdon is a contributing editor to Runner's World and author of more than three dozen books, including "Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide."